12. The Monologue
Last time on Quarks of the Heart, Meg Atomic lies critically injured in the St. Cupertino hospital as Captain Happily Married flies to confront the Malevolent Med-Student at Vault Site G….
The Malevolent Med-Student had planned everything meticulously, a task made easier since he had studied the work of Professor Irreconcilable Differences before him. Now he stood in his full supervillain outfit, arms akimbo, speech prepared, waiting in the open doorway of Vault Site G for the heroes to arrive.
Captain Happily Married, as he expected, was the first. He came in like a thunderclap, cape snapping in his wake, eyes afire in wrath. “KEITH!” he shouted in a voice that shook even the concrete steel-reinforced doors of the vault site.
“That’s the Malevolent Med-Student to you,” the supervillain said. “Candystriper, if you would?”
From the nearby niche where she had positioned herself to watch the show, she tossed him the Kaboominator. He caught it and took aim. “Now,” the Malevolent Med-Student said as the Captain skidded abruptly to a halt in mid-flight, “Since I have your attention, I’d like to take a moment to explain exactly what I’ve done.”
Captain Happily Married’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“Yes,” the Malevolent Med-Student said, “You see, I’m applying for membership in the Committee of Calamity, and I really needed something to, shall we say, punch up my application. This should do very nicely, don’t you think?” He laughed in that particularly nasty cackling way that supervillains have.”
“You mean,” Captain Happily Married said, “All of it, the entire thing, your…relationship with my daughter… it was all a set-up?”
“What, you didn’t realize?” the Malevolent Med-Student said. “Well, no, I suppose you wouldn’t have, considering you have about the brainpower level of a sea slug. Right, so let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I deliberately provoked a battle with Titanium-Alloy Guy under circumstances I knew would attract your daughter’s attention, then used a combination of a deprecatory monologue and intriguing technology to acquire her sympathies!”
“What?” said Captain Happily Married.
The Malevolent Med-Student rolled his eyes. “I made her feel sorry for me. Moving on: we had a few dates, I managed an entrance into your home and then, while affecting the nervous-boyfriend persona, I observed a seemingly out-of-place DVD in your bookshelf, because really, who watches DVDs anymore when you can just get it on streaming?”
“Actually,” Captain Happily Married interjected, “We do have streaming; the DVDs are but a system cleverly devised by Super Soccer Mom to remind me of the access code to the vault wherein we conceal dangerous weaponry like the Kaboominator!”
“Right,” the Malevolent Med-Student said. “Great system. You probably need a list to remember to pick up the milk, am I right? Well, anyway, seeing as you had Goldfinger just sitting up there randomly amidst some knick-knacks and whatnot, I figured that the theme from that movie was the access code just like you said, and after that it was a simple matter of separating the two of you, disabling her, and relaying the access code to my henchwoman!”
“Hi!” Candystriper said, waving from her niche. “I’m the henchwoman!”
“Right you are, Candystriper!” the Malevolent Med-Student said. “Now, with the Kaboominator retrieved, all I have to deal with is you, Captain.”
He smiled, his monologue nearly complete. “And after that…after that, Edison City is mine!”
The Malevolent Med-Student let loose with the triumphant evil laugh he’d been practicing on the quiet for so long. When he’d finished, he was honestly a little surprised that Captain Happily Married was still there. He had half expected the man to fly off in terror, or at least fall back and regroup, something. What he did not expect was for the Captain to still be standing there, arms folded, a slight look of contempt on his face.
“A well-executed plan, Mr. Malcolm,” Captain Happily Married said. “I don’t think any of us suspected.”
“I did,” said Liz Flask, emerging from the shadows, “especially when you had my best friend blast me into my own refrigerator while you were going on about the difference between rays and beams. Like it matters.”
“Ah,” the Malevolent Med-Student said, “Let me guess: you followed the Captain from the hospital because you realized the value of True Friendship and now you want to make things right, is that it?”
“Half right,” Liz said. “Friendship yes, the other part not so much, because honestly I really just want to kick your-”
“Now now!” said Captain Happily Married. “Even with this miscreant one must uphold certain standards of linguistic propriety!”
“Really?” Liz said. “Now? You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
“Excuse me!” the Malevolent Med-Student interrupted. “I have you at Kaboominator-point and this is the conversation you want recorded as your last words?”
The word recorded gave Captain Happily Married an idea. “Of course not,” he said, raising his voice to a level he knew would trip the sensors inside the vault, if they hadn’t been tripped already. “But I did have one remaining question. You could’ve used the Kaboominator to take out my daughter once you had the access code; why the Pharma-Death Beam?”
“Ah, yes,” the Malevolent Med-Student said, “You know, I’m actually glad you asked that; I was particularly proud of that and I wanted it noted for my application; you see, I had developed a compact version of the Pharma-Death Beam using carefully-targeted xanthic field generators prismatically focused through an thrynite projector!”
“Thank you,” Captain Happily Married said. “Seymour, do you have that?”
A burst of acknowledging beeps resounded in the vault site.
“What?” the Malevolent Med-Student said.
“They weren’t sure at Cupertino how to treat Meg, what to do, since they didn’t know how your Pharma-Death Beam worked. Now, thanks to you and Seymour, our cybernetically-enhanced soccer ball, they do!”
Captain Happily Married smiled. “You should’ve known, son; I’m afraid your application to the Committee of Calamity is about to receive the Rejection Letter of Justice!”
“Oh, cr-” said the Malevolent Med-Student, scrambling for the Kaboominator trigger button just as Liz Flask and the Captain blasted forward straight at him.
“Oooh,” Candystriper said, wincing in the niche where she was still perched. “This isn’t going to go well at all.”
The distinctive thud she heard, where there should’ve been a tremendous kaboom, told her she was probably right.
The difference is that DVDs are a physical, permanent record of a show, particularly if it's not being heavily screened in circulation or cable TV. The streaming services treat programs as ephemerality that they can profit from quickly and then can, which is not how it's supposed to work...
The MMS is an ass- some of us (like me) still use DVDs because we can actually watch the content in the episode order and quantity we want, and we only have to pay for them ONCE!